Top of the line memory like all high quality components is highly expensive. A lot of readers
often e-mail me to ask "Colin, is it really necessary to purchase the high
end stuff to run at high FSB's?" My answer has always been, yes
and no. Now take for instance the KingMAX PC3200 memory we are looking at today, it's readily available and quite
inexpensive for DDR400/PC3200 memory. With a street
price of $130 CDN ($70 US) for 256MB, it's about $60 CDN cheaper then
Corsair's XMS3200 CAS 2. It's even $40 less expensive then bargain barrel OCZ PC3200 DDR memory.
KingMAX DDR is very friendly towards the wallet, but
the big question is how well does it perform?

KingMAX distinguish themselves
from other manufacturers by using BGA DRAM on their memory modules. They
little BGA chips look different, and can actually help the silicon run a
little cooler then regular TSOP-II based memory. This stick of KingMAX
DDR400 DRAM comes equipped with 5ns DRAM timing which suggests it should be
able to do 200 MHz FSB (1000 MHz / 5 =200
MHz).

The
chips have a code of KDL684T4AA on them. Usually I don't mention the markings on the
DRAM, but if you remember from our KingMAX DDR333 review the DRAM was also rated at 5ns
and the DRAM markings were KDL684T4A2A. In that review we were only able to get
the memory to 179 MHz FSB. We are hoping for some better luck this time
around.

To test
out the overclockability of the Kingmax DDR400 I plugged the memory module into
the first DIMM slot of the Epox 8K5A2+ and booted into WindowsXP with everything at stock speed. The BIOS was
set to use the most aggressive memory timings. Unfortunately, while running the
first round of 3DMark tests the system would crash back to
desktop. Things weren't getting off to a good start. In fact, I had to increase the voltage to 2.7V to get the the memory to run
stable just at stock speeds!

Anyways,
I started to increase the FSB and at 170 MHz FSB I
hit another snag, the system would BSOD while loading WindowsXP. Increasing the voltage further
still to 2.8V seemed to fix the problem. At 175 MHz FSB I had to increase the
voltage yet again, this time to 2.9V in order to keep everything stable.

At any
speeds higher than 180 MHz FSB the system would simply BSOD everywhere, and attempts at increasing the voltage just seemed to exacerbate the problem!

Just for fun, I set the memory timings to SPD and started to increase the FSB alone. With SPD settings I was only able to hit 185 MHz FSB while using a voltage of 2.9V!

PCStats
Test System Specs:

Computer Hardware:

Processor:

AMD AthlonXP 2000+

Clock
Speed:

12.5 x 133 MHz = 1.66 GHz

9.5 x 180 MHz = 1.71 GHz

Motherboards:

Epox 8K5A2+

Chipset:

VIA KT333

Videocard:

MSI GeForce4 Ti4600

Memory:

256MB Crucial PC2700256MB KingMAX
PC3200

Hard
Drive:

40GB Samsung
SP4004H

CDROM:

NEC 52x CD-ROM

Floppy:

Panasonic 1.44MB Floppy Drive

Heatsink:

Thermalright SK-6 W/40CFM YS
Tech

PowerSupply:

Antec 400W PSU

Software
Setup

WindowsXP Build 2600VIA 4in1
4.42VDetonatorXP 30.82

Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2002 ProPCMark20023DMark2001 SEQuake III
Arena

We usually benchmark with
UT2003 however we were not able to get it to run properly in this case above 150
MHz FSB.